Tofani, Rick (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology)

Purpose

The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) is requesting support from the NSERC Applied Research and Development grant program for an applied research project with Cenovus Energy Inc. to determine if fixed radio-frequency identification (RFID) infrastructure combined with an RFID-enabled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) provides improved inventory accuracy in a remote laydown yard setting. Inventory management is a big challenge for companies that keep large, valuable assets in expansive yards at a wide variety of often remote locations. Manual inventory management processes are commonly used but are labour intensive, prone to human error during tracking, recording and data management, and result in misplacing or losing a significant number of very valuable assets annually. The current economic climate of fiscal restraint has made this the right time to test automated solutions to this problem. The project will benefit from and build on applied research expertise and infrastructure at SAIT. It will be led by the Centre for Innovative Information Technology Solutions (CIITS) in the Applied Research and Innovation Services (ARIS) department._x000D_